Sunday, October 19, 2008

K. I know no one's reading this, and I know this is NOT music-related, but...

Look. At. This.

It's beautiful. Really. I mean, just... just let that one sink in for a moment.That is one gorgeous fantasy novel cover. And, (shocker) a DEBUT fantasy novel. In fact, check this dude out:http://www.myspace.com/raynaofnightwind

he is SO PROUD.In fact, I suspect he might have made this cover himself.

These small .jpgs don't do justice to this nightmare photoshoppery. It's like you're dreaming, and it's your mother, and she's at the computer, making something, but she has the head of a snake, and you look over at the screen and you recoil in horror: "no! GOD, no, PLEASE! Don't touch that image like that! STOP!" You could have thrown a mere 50 bucks at deviantart and got a far better cover than this travesty. The cover puts this book in same hideous-cover league as social work textbooks and new-age self-help manuals. Honestly, it draws me to this book, because I hope in some way that the book will just be page after page of awful, tacky mash-ups in the same way the cover does. Flipping throught it I find mentions of fair but beguiling maidens, lofty 'spymasters,' and giant half-lizard, half-boar beasts dripping 'green ichor.' So, pretty much what you'd expect, but not as awful as you might hope.

I would add that I can tell this is clearly a quality title from a diligent publisher because the internal illustrations, including the crappy, tolkien-esque map and the little illustrations that go after each chapter heading (what are those called?) are rife with the worst jpg artifacting I have ever seen professionally published. Like they googled "old book illustration," found the first 237x341 image that pooped up and slapped into their word file.

“My novel is unique in that it balances action, storytelling, and romance better than the average fantasy novel. I think that makes for a far more satisfying story.” Baker also noted that his new book features a strong female main character—something still relatively uncommon in fantasy and sci-fi literature."